The Proletariat and the Peasantry

Published:Vperyod, No. 11, March 23 (10), 1905.

      Published according to the text inVperyod.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Foreign Languages Publishing House,1962,

      Moscow,Volume 8,

      pages231-236.Translated:Bernard Isaacs and The Late Isidor LaskerTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thepeasant uprisings have begun. Reports of peasants raiding landed estates and
confiscating the landlords’ grain and cattle are coming in from various
provinces. The tsarist armies, routed by the Japanese in Manchuria, are taking
their revenge on the defenceless people, making expeditions against the enemy at
home, against the rural poor. The urban working-class movement is acquiring a
new ally in the revolutionary peasantry. The attitude of the class-conscious
vanguard of the proletariat, the Social-Democrats, towards the peasant movement
is becoming a question of immediate practical significance and must be placed
on the order of the day in all our Party organisations, in all
speeches by propagandists and agitators.

TheSocial-Democrats have pointed out repeatedly that the peasant movement sets
before them a twofold task. Unquestionably we must support this movement and
spur it on, inasmuch as it is a revolutionary-democratic movement. At the same
time we must unswervingly maintain our class proletarian point of view; we must
organise the rural proletariat, like the urban proletariat and together with
it, into an independent class party; we must explain to it

that. itsinterests
are antagonistic to those of the bourgeois peasantry; we must call upon it to
fight for the socialist revolution, and point out to it that liberation from
oppression and poverty lies, not in turning several sections of the peasantry
into petty bourgeois, but only in replacing the entire bourgeois system by the
socialist system.

Thistwofold task of the Social-Democrats was often stressed in the oldIskra, beginning with issue

				No. 3,[1]i. e., evenbefore the first peasant movement of 1902; it found expression in our Party
      programme; it was also repeated in our newspaper (issue

				No. 3[2]).

Now, when
      it is particularly important to throw light on the practical aspects of
      this problem, it would be of interest to quote the remarks of Karl
      Kautsky, who published an article entitled “The Peasants and the
      Revolution in Russia” in the German Social-Democratic journal,Die Neue Zeit.As a Social-Democrat, Kautsky stoutly upholds the
    truth that the task facing our revolution now is not that of effecting the
    socialist revolution but that of removing the political obstacles to the
    development of the existing, capitalist, mode of production. He goes on to
    say: “On the question of the relations between peasant and landlord,
    the revolutionary urban movement should remain neutral. It has no reason to
    step in between the peasants and the landlord, to champion the latter
    against the former; its sympathies are wholly with the peasantry. But
    neither is it the task of the revolutionary urban movement to incite the
    peasants against the landlords, who in present-day Russia play an entirely
    different role from that, let us say, of the French feudal nobility in the
    days of theancien régime.Besides, even if they wished to, the
    urban revolutionaries could have very little influence on the relations
    between the landlords and the peasants. That is a matter the landlords and
    the peasants must settle between them selves." For a correct understanding
    of Kautsky’s remarks, which, taken out of context, might create no little
    misunderstanding, one must bear in mind also the following remark at the
    end of the article: “A victorious revolution would not have too much
    difficulty in using the large latifundia of the worst enemies of the
    revolution ... to improve the conditions of the proletarians and the
    peasants.”

Thereader who carefully compares these statements of Kautsky will easily
recognise in them the Social-Democratic presentation of the question we have
just outlined. Certain inaccuracies and unclarities in Kautsky’s expressions can
be accounted for by the cursory nature of his remarks and his insufficient
acquaintance with the agrarian programme of Russian Social-Democracy. The crux
of the matter is thatthe attitude of the revolutionary proletariat towards the antagonism between the
peasants and the landlords cannot, in all the exigencies of the Russian
revolution, remain the same in all cases and under all circumstances. Under
certain circumstances, in certain situations, this attitude must be one not only
of sympathy, but of direct support, and not merely support, but actual
“incitement”. Under other circumstances, the attitude can and
should be neutral. Judging from what we have quoted, Kautsky has correctly
grasped this double aspect of our task, in contrast, not only to our
“Social ists-Revolutionaries”, who are sunk completely in
the vulgar illusions of revolutionary democracy, but also to many
Social-Democrats,
who, like Ryazanov or X,[3]have been seeking a “simple”
solution of the problem, valid for all combinations. The fundamental error of
such Social-Democrats (and of all Socialists-Revolutionaries) is that they do
not adhere to the class viewpoint, and that, in seeking a universal solution of
the problem in all its combinations, they forget the dual nature of the
well-to-do and the middle peasant. They take into account, virtually, only two
classes— either landlords and “peasant and working class”, or
proprietors and proletarians. Actually, however, there are three classes, all
of which differ in their immediate and ultimate aims: the landlords, the
well-to-do peasantry and partly the middle peasantry, and, finally, the
proletariat. Actually, the task of the proletariat under these circumstances is
necessarily twofold. The entire difficulty of a Social-Democratic agrarian
programme and agrarian policy in Russia lies in defining, as clearly and
precisely as possible, the conditions under which the proletariat must observe
neutrality and the conditions under which support and “incitement”
are necessary.

Therecan be only one solution to this problem: with the peasant bourgeoisie
against all manner of serfdom and against the serf-owning landlords; with the
urban proletariat against the peasant bourgeoisie and every other
bourgeoisie—such is the “line” of the rural proletariat. and
of its ideologists, the Social-Democrats. In other words:
to support the peasantry and urge it on even to the point of seizing any
seigniorial “property”, no matter how “sacred”,insofar asthis peasantry acts in a revolutionary-democraticmanner; to be wary of the peasantry, to organise separately from it, to be ready
      to combat it,insofar asthis peasantry acts in a reactionary or
    anti-proletarian manner. Or, to put it still differently: aid to the peasant
    when his struggle with the landlord contributes to the development and
    strengthening of the democratic forces; neutrality towards the peasant when
    his struggle with the landlord is merely a matter of squaring accounts
    between two factions of the landowning class, a matter to which the
    proletariat and the democrats are indifferent.

Suchan answer, of course, will not satisfy people who approach the peasant
question without well thought-out theoretical views, who are intent on popular
“revolutionary” slogans calculated for effect, and who do not
understand the great and serious danger of revolutionary adventurism,
particularly in the sphere of the peasant question. In regard to such
people—of whom there are now a considerable number among us, such as the
Socialists-Revolutionaries, with the development of the revolution and of the
peasant movement promising an increase in their ranks—the Social-Democrats
must firmly uphold the standpoint of the class struggle against every kind of
revolutionary vagueness; they must contrapose to revolutionary phrase-mongering
the sober estimate of the heterogeneous elements in the peasantry. Speaking
practically and concretely, the following statement will bring us nearest the
truth: All opponents of Social-Democracy on the agrarian question fail to take
into consideration the fact that in European Russia proper there is an entire
stratum of well-to-do peasants (one and a half to two million households out of
a total of about ten million). This stratum controls no less than half of all
the implements of production and all the property owned by the peasants. It
cannot exist without employing seasonal and day labourers. It is certainly
hostile to serfdom, to the landlords, and to the bureaucracy, and is capable of
becoming democratic, but still more certain is its hostility to the rural
proletariat. Any attempt in an agrarian programme or in an agrarian policy to
tone down or ignore this class antagonism is a conscious or unconscious
departure from the socialist point of view.

Betweenthe rural proletariat and the peasant bourgeoisie lies the stratum of
the middle peasantry, whose positioncontains features to be found in both of these antipodes. The common features in
the position of all these strata, of the peasantry as a whole, undoubtedly tend
to make the entire peasant movement democratic, great as may be the evidences
of non-class-consciousness and of reactionary sentiment in particular
instances. It is our task never to depart from the class standpoint and to
organise the closest possible union between the urban and the rural
proletariat. It is our task to clarify for ourselves and for the people therealdemocratic and revolutionary content that lies in the general,
albeit vague, striving towards “land and freedom”. It is, therefore,
our task to lend the most energetic support and impetus to this striving, while
at the same time preparing the elements of socialist struggle in the countryside
as well.

Todetermine clearly the practical attitude of the Social-Democratic
working-class party towards the peasant movement, the Third Congress of our
Party must adopt a resolution calling for support to that movement. The
following is the draft of such a resolution formulating the above views, which
have repeatedly been amplified in Social-Democratic literature; it must now be
discussed in the widest possible circle of Party functionaries:

“TheRussian Social-Democratic Labour Party, as the party of the
class-conscious proletariat, strives to bring about the complete emancipation of
all working people from every kind of exploitation, and supports every
revolutionary movement against the present social and political
system. Therefore, the R.S.D.L.P. strongly supports the present-day peasant
movement, among others, and stands for all revolutionary measures capable of
improving the condition of the peasantry, not halting at the expropriation of
the landed estates to this end. At the same time, as the class party of the
proletariat, the R.S.D.L.P. works undeviatingly towards an independent class
organisation of the rural proletarians, ever mindful of its obligation to make
clear to them the antagonism of their interests to those of the peasant
bourgeoisie, to bring them to understand that only the common struggle of the
rural and the urban proletariat against the whole of bourgeois society can lead
to the socialist revolution, which alone is capable of really freeing the mass
of the rural poor from poverty and exploitation.

“Asa practical slogan for agitation among the peasantry, and as a means of
      instilling the utmost political consciousness into this movement, the
      R.S.D.L.P. proposes the immediate formation of revolutionary peasant
      committees for all-round support of all democratic reforms and for their
      implementation in detail. In these committees as well the R.S.D.L.P. will
      strive for an independent organisation of the rural proletarians for the
      purpose of supporting the entire peasantry in all its
      revolutionary-democratic actions, on the one hand, and, on the other, of
      safeguarding the true interests of the rural proletariat in its struggle
      against the peasant bourgeoisie.”

[1]“The Workers’ Party and the Peasantry”. See present edition, Vol. 4,
pp. 420-28.—Ed.

[2]See pp. 83-89 of this volume.—Ed.

[3]X—pseudonym of the Menshevik P. P. Maslov.